Evan Cornog and Victor Navasky. (Photo credit: Brendan Fitzgerald)

If you came to New York expecting book parties to be tame, dignified affairs held in dusty university clubs, where distinguished older gentlemen talk about editors of yore over cocktails and lamb chops, well, your expectations would have been met Monday night at the Columbia University Press launch of The Art of Making Magazines.

The anthology was culled from 10-plus years of lectures by notable magazine editors by Victor Navasky, editor emeritus of The Nation and the director of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism magazine program, and Evan Cornog, the dean of Hofstra University’s School of Communications.

Mr. Cornog spoke with enthusiasm to a small cluster about magazines’ digital future. “Yes, but is the advertising money there?” asked one pragmatic author. Mr. Cornog agreed that getting people to pay for content may pose a challenge.

To be sure, it is an odd time to celebrate the magazine business. Newsweek’s print demise was on many a mind, and tongue. But if there is still a stodgy glamor to be found, it was on display at the Columbia University Club. And, according to departing Columbia J-School dean Nicholas Lemann, rumors of the magazine industry’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, at least if you ask young journalists.

“It always surprises people to hear that our most popular concentration for years has been magazines,” Mr. Lemann told the crowd, before asking if anyone had seen The Devil Wears Prada.

The reference got a hearty laugh.

He went on to explain, however, that while his 20-something sons and their friends were inspired by Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, apparently The Devil Wears Prada is Wall Street for aspiring female journalists. “[I]n our heavily female school, many of our students watch The Devil Wears Prada and say ‘I want in.’ And so they come to us, and sit at Victor’s feet and learn about magazines,” Mr. Lemann said. “And who knows, maybe one of them will be either the editor of The Nation or the editor of Vogue.”

Mr. Navasky expressed similar surprise that long-form print is still the dream of so many young journalists.

Dreams die hard, it seems.

Started by The Nation's publisher emeritus Victor Navasky and some of  his Yale law school friends in the late 1950s, the original magazine became a petri dish for a new strain of anti-establishment irreverence that was just beginning to bloom. As a fond appreciation of the magazine by Design Observer's Steven Heller points out, among the magazine's contributors were Calvin Trillin, Dan Wakefield, Edward Sorel and Robert Grossman (who contributes illustrations to The Observer).

According to Tyler Brûlé, his magazine, which launched in March 2007, was originally supposed to be called The Edit, but he was unable to acquire the name since "someone in Australia had it [and] they wouldn't sell it."

"Richard Spencer Powell, our creative director, and I were sitting in my office looking at the email that said we couldn't get the name and it was one of those three minute brainstorms," he said. "I said we need something that on the one side is about our focused vision and somewhat singular view of the world, but we wanted something that was a little bit establishment and sounds like it's been around for a while."

When reached by The Observer, Mr. Navasky said that when Mr. Brûlé's magazine was announced, "I got a half-dozen emails and calls saying, 'Are you gonna sue?' 'Did they get your permission?' or whatever."

"I don't believe in suing," he continued. "We never trademarked the name."

Mr. Navasky said that no one from Mr. Brûlé's group contacted him about the use of the name. "As a courtesy, one would have thought [they would]."

"They seem to want to put out a classy magazine that covers the waterfront," he said of the new Monocle. "I didn't get the sense that they were in any way, shape or form trying to imitate anything Monocle had done, so I didn't have any idea that they knew about it or not."

Mr. Brûlé said he was aware of the original Monocle, but called the shared name "a happy accident."

According to Mr. Navasky's memoir, A Matter of Opinion, "At Monocle our theory had been that a magazine's price should reflect its value. Thus, if one issue was worth $10, we should charge $10, but if we deemed the next issue inferior, thinner, or whatever, and only worth 50 cents, we should charge only 50 cents." Copies of the magazine can still be found on eBay, where they're going for $14.95.

Compare that with the newer magazine's $10 cover price in the U.S., and subscriptions that go for £75 (about $110)—but you do get a handsome tote bag and access to the magazine's Web archive.

"People say Monocle was ahead of its time," Mr. Navasky said. "We charged $7.50 for 10 issues, or $5 for a lifetime subscription, so by some kind of metaphysical formula, we're still publishing."

Well, if the current bids on The Nation's First Ever Online Auction are any guide, it'll cost you upwards of $2,500, but really, according to the description of the item, its estimated value is "priceless."

Other items for sale include a signed copy of Victor Navasky's A Matter of Opinion and original art by Edward Sorel and George Shreiber.

There's also an autographed DVD of John Cusack's Mark Leyner-cowritten movie War, Inc. that's currently at $80, perfect for that Halliburton-hating, Military-Industrial-Complex dismantler on your Holiday gift list.

The email included a sweet photo of the staff of the good ship Nation listing port-ward, captain Victor Navasky standing confidently in the center. The caption reads: "Our entire Nation staff, still leaning left thanks to you!"

It's always nice to be thanked, but according to a former Nation staffer seen beaming in the photo, the picture's five years old. A few of those left-leaning staffers have since gone on to other jobs, including at the The Observer.

Three stars

72 West 69th Street

(near Columbus Avenue)

212-580-4300

Dress: Casual

Lighting: Low and pleasant

Noise Level: Fine

Wine List: Mainly Italian, French and Californian

Credit Cards: All major

Price Range: Main courses, $25 to $33

Dinner: Sunday, 5 to 10:30 p.m.; Tuesday through Thursday;

to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, to 11:30 p.m.

Telepan has turned its back on all that is bustling, trendy and loud. While the latest restaurants are cranking up the volume, pinpointing their diners with overhead lights, mixing bizarre “muddled” cocktails and opening their kitchens to the prying gaze of customers, Telepan is an oasis of calm. It’s in two townhouses—two separate dining rooms with four fireplaces, a wine room, sage-green walls and crisp white tablecloths, where nicely behaved customers (mobile phones off) talk in low voices and make appreciative remarks about the food to a polite, friendly staff. It’s not noisy. Imagine that!

Telepan is just a short walk from Lincoln Center, and it was close to 11 p.m. when I arrived here for the first time, for dinner after the ballet. I’d expected to be rushed through with last orders from a closing kitchen, but the place was going as strong as if it were downtown. What’s more, even though the restaurant opened only a few weeks ago on the Upper West Side, Telepan already seems to have established itself as this neighborhood’s answer to the Union Square Cafe, attracting a following of editors, authors, publishers and neighborhood intellectuals (including such éminences grises as Victor Navasky and Ed Doctorow). And they’re not coming here just because Telepan is a place where you can hold a conversation.

The draw is the outstanding cooking of Bill Telepan, the former chef at Judson Grill. He’s the slight, shy-looking man with close-cropped hair and large, black-framed glasses who appears once in a while and stands near the bar. He looks more like a straight-A chemistry student than a three-star chef. The blown-up photographs of fruits and vegetables that hang on some of the walls come from his cookbook, Inspired by Ingredients. All chefs these days talk of their dedication to ingredients, local and organic, but what really sets Mr. Telepan apart is the clarity and focus of his food, which is elegant and without gimmickry (no froths, foams or fusions).

You can eat any way you like: The menu is set up with first courses, midcourses and main courses. You can come in and get a light meal of shirred or coddled eggs or have a five-course dinner. We chose a four-course tasting ($55)—we could have done five, but it was 11 p.m., after all. Moreover, we decided to throw ourselves upon the mercy of the sommelier to do the wine pairings ($32). The result was pure theater.

The young sommelier, Aaron von Rock (I’m not making this name up), looks like a character from a Dickens novel: thin, gangly and almost foppish, with dark locks shaped into a quiff and a face decorated with artfully placed patches of hair. His wine patter is pure delight. “The finish of this Mâcon is like adding the scallop shells back to the scallops,” he said as he poured a glass to go with Mr. Telepan’s plump, medium-rare, parsley-breaded sea scallops, which came with broccoli rabe and a delicious twirl of Meyer lemon–pepper linguine.

“The minerality of this bright, clean Sancerre comes from fossils. There are even fossils in the walls on the cave of this old Latin vineyard!” he announced, pairing the wine with a buttery piece of lobster in a nest of spaghetti on a light, tangy shallot-garlic-tomato broth seasoned with herbs.

Telepan’s 520-bottle wine list is mainly Italian, French and Californian, much of it from the cellar of partner Jimmy Nicholas, and includes a selection of organic and biodynamic wines (the latter are wines grown in specially composted soil) and many unusual boutique vintages.

“This white stays focused and keeps its identity,” Mr. von Rock said firmly, pouring a sturdy Pinot Grigio to go with yellowtail tuna sashimi served on large, nutty grains of tabbouleh tossed with cured tuna, citrus and mint. “You’ll like the opulent textures of this Müller-Thurgau,” he announced, matching a wine from the Alto Adige region of Italy with pierogi stuffed with black truffles and potatoes over a bed of cabbage and chives. (The pierogi were great but needed a dash of salt).

A Grüner Veltliner that he poured with the house-smoked brook trout was a little thin, but the trout—mounded on dollar-sized buckwheat potato blini and black radish sour cream—was extraordinary. “I’d like to let you know the chef is adding osetra to the trout this evening,” announced the waitress. What a treat! Another night he didn’t feel like it (the osetra was offered, however, at an extra $18), but the trout was so good, who missed the caviar? The glazed, marinated quail was also wonderful, cut up and served with a great apple-duck sausage, chicories, apple balsamic and walnuts.

Vegetarians will not feel deprived with the roast cauliflower purée, with crushed heirloom shell beans, purple broccoli herb oil, and winter greens. Another vegetarian dish, sweet potato blini with spaghetti squash in a sauce with almonds and pumpkin spice, was a bit too sweet for me, like a Thanksgiving dessert.

A Kunin Pape Star from California—“only the second vintage ever made and it’s like Châteauneuf-du-Pape”—went with the duck, one of the best dishes on the menu: seared breast with a silken foie gras custard, cauliflower, hazelnuts and pears. The cassoulet was also remarkable: heritage pork, smoked sausage, spareribs and cured bacon accompanied by a small terrine of creamy beans sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Sausage heaven.

When it came to the bottle of malmsey he offered for dessert, I decided to test Mr. von Rock. In which Shakespeare play does malmsey appear? He paused for a minute. “Henry IV, Falstaff’s friend.”

The “malmsey-nose knave.” Not to mention the Duke of Clarence in Richard III, said to have drowned in a tub of malmsey.

The meal winds up on a high note with the desserts of pastry chef Larissa Raphael, who was formerly at AZ, Pace and Judson Grill. They include glazed profiteroles in a spongy brioche dough filled with caramel and served with vanilla ice cream, and an Oloroso sherry custard sandwich with candied blood oranges and glazed pecans. The custard was perfect but a tad overwhelmed by the sherry. A granita of quince, drenched with Prosecco, was bit too icy.

With the bill came a small box of petits fours. “Take them home with you,” said our waitress.

“Or eat them all now,” said my companion.

And he did.

Three stars

72 West 69th Street

(near Columbus Avenue)

212-580-4300

Dress: Casual

Lighting: Low and pleasant

Noise Level: Fine

Wine List: Mainly Italian, French and Californian

Credit Cards: All major

Price Range: Main courses, $25 to $33

Dinner: Sunday, 5 to 10:30 p.m.; Tuesday through Thursday;

to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, to 11:30 p.m.

Telepan has turned its back on all that is bustling, trendy and loud. While the latest restaurants are cranking up the volume, pinpointing their diners with overhead lights, mixing bizarre “muddled” cocktails and opening their kitchens to the prying gaze of customers, Telepan is an oasis of calm. It’s in two townhouses—two separate dining rooms with four fireplaces, a wine room, sage-green walls and crisp white tablecloths, where nicely behaved customers (mobile phones off) talk in low voices and make appreciative remarks about the food to a polite, friendly staff. It’s not noisy. Imagine that!

Telepan is just a short walk from Lincoln Center, and it was close to 11 p.m. when I arrived here for the first time, for dinner after the ballet. I’d expected to be rushed through with last orders from a closing kitchen, but the place was going as strong as if it were downtown. What’s more, even though the restaurant opened only a few weeks ago on the Upper West Side, Telepan already seems to have established itself as this neighborhood’s answer to the Union Square Cafe, attracting a following of editors, authors, publishers and neighborhood intellectuals (including such éminences grises as Victor Navasky and Ed Doctorow). And they’re not coming here just because Telepan is a place where you can hold a conversation.

The draw is the outstanding cooking of Bill Telepan, the former chef at Judson Grill. He’s the slight, shy-looking man with close-cropped hair and large, black-framed glasses who appears once in a while and stands near the bar. He looks more like a straight-A chemistry student than a three-star chef. The blown-up photographs of fruits and vegetables that hang on some of the walls come from his cookbook, Inspired by Ingredients. All chefs these days talk of their dedication to ingredients, local and organic, but what really sets Mr. Telepan apart is the clarity and focus of his food, which is elegant and without gimmickry (no froths, foams or fusions).

You can eat any way you like: The menu is set up with first courses, midcourses and main courses. You can come in and get a light meal of shirred or coddled eggs or have a five-course dinner. We chose a four-course tasting ($55)—we could have done five, but it was 11 p.m., after all. Moreover, we decided to throw ourselves upon the mercy of the sommelier to do the wine pairings ($32). The result was pure theater.

The young sommelier, Aaron von Rock (I’m not making this name up), looks like a character from a Dickens novel: thin, gangly and almost foppish, with dark locks shaped into a quiff and a face decorated with artfully placed patches of hair. His wine patter is pure delight. “The finish of this Mâcon is like adding the scallop shells back to the scallops,” he said as he poured a glass to go with Mr. Telepan’s plump, medium-rare, parsley-breaded sea scallops, which came with broccoli rabe and a delicious twirl of Meyer lemon–pepper linguine.

“The minerality of this bright, clean Sancerre comes from fossils. There are even fossils in the walls on the cave of this old Latin vineyard!” he announced, pairing the wine with a buttery piece of lobster in a nest of spaghetti on a light, tangy shallot-garlic-tomato broth seasoned with herbs.

Telepan’s 520-bottle wine list is mainly Italian, French and Californian, much of it from the cellar of partner Jimmy Nicholas, and includes a selection of organic and biodynamic wines (the latter are wines grown in specially composted soil) and many unusual boutique vintages.

“This white stays focused and keeps its identity,” Mr. von Rock said firmly, pouring a sturdy Pinot Grigio to go with yellowtail tuna sashimi served on large, nutty grains of tabbouleh tossed with cured tuna, citrus and mint. “You’ll like the opulent textures of this Müller-Thurgau,” he announced, matching a wine from the Alto Adige region of Italy with pierogi stuffed with black truffles and potatoes over a bed of cabbage and chives. (The pierogi were great but needed a dash of salt).

A Grüner Veltliner that he poured with the house-smoked brook trout was a little thin, but the trout—mounded on dollar-sized buckwheat potato blini and black radish sour cream—was extraordinary. “I’d like to let you know the chef is adding osetra to the trout this evening,” announced the waitress. What a treat! Another night he didn’t feel like it (the osetra was offered, however, at an extra $18), but the trout was so good, who missed the caviar? The glazed, marinated quail was also wonderful, cut up and served with a great apple-duck sausage, chicories, apple balsamic and walnuts.

Vegetarians will not feel deprived with the roast cauliflower purée, with crushed heirloom shell beans, purple broccoli herb oil, and winter greens. Another vegetarian dish, sweet potato blini with spaghetti squash in a sauce with almonds and pumpkin spice, was a bit too sweet for me, like a Thanksgiving dessert.

A Kunin Pape Star from California—“only the second vintage ever made and it’s like Châteauneuf-du-Pape”—went with the duck, one of the best dishes on the menu: seared breast with a silken foie gras custard, cauliflower, hazelnuts and pears. The cassoulet was also remarkable: heritage pork, smoked sausage, spareribs and cured bacon accompanied by a small terrine of creamy beans sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Sausage heaven.

When it came to the bottle of malmsey he offered for dessert, I decided to test Mr. von Rock. In which Shakespeare play does malmsey appear? He paused for a minute. “ Henry IV, Falstaff’s friend.”

The “malmsey-nose knave.” Not to mention the Duke of Clarence in Richard III, said to have drowned in a tub of malmsey.

The meal winds up on a high note with the desserts of pastry chef Larissa Raphael, who was formerly at AZ, Pace and Judson Grill. They include glazed profiteroles in a spongy brioche dough filled with caramel and served with vanilla ice cream, and an Oloroso sherry custard sandwich with candied blood oranges and glazed pecans. The custard was perfect but a tad overwhelmed by the sherry. A granita of quince, drenched with Prosecco, was bit too icy.

With the bill came a small box of petits fours. “Take them home with you,” said our waitress.

“Or eat them all now,” said my companion.

And he did.

This is probably not what Nation publisher Victor Navasky and editor Katrina vanden Heuvel had in mind when they invited Mr. Hitchens to explain himself after the story broke. Ms. vanden Heuvel termed it "a staff conversation with Christopher … a chance to just have a frank and constructive exchange of ideas." When asked if it was a show trial, Mr. Navasky said, "Oh, no."

Still, Mr. Hitchens feels he's entering enemy territory. Perhaps for good reason. The March 1 issue of The Nation featured an unsigned editorial stating that Mr. Hitchens "inexplicably" filed the affidavit contradicting Mr. Blumenthal's testimony to Kenneth Starr's investigation of the President. It went on: "The moral issues involved in Hitchens' actions are clear: We believe there is a journalistic (and ethical) presumption against using private conversations with friends for a public purpose without first obtaining permission; and against a reporter cooperating with, and thus helping legitimize, a reckless Congressional prosecutor."

Mr. Hitchens was allowed to defend himself in his usual column space, in a piece titled "What Really Happened," which said The Nation had been "suckered" by the Clintons and expressed sympathy for Monica Lewinsky. That was followed by a sarcastic rejoinder by associate editor Katha Pollitt in her Subject to Debate column. Ms. Pollitt, who was allowed to read his column before writing hers, compared him to a McCarthyite and accused him of being a borderline misogynist. She said he called women "douchebags"–an accusation she then took back in the March 15 issue, saying, "His longtime editor must have disremembered." Ms. Pollitt planned to attend the March 4 meeting. "I'd be very interested [in] what he has to say," she said.

To get all his perceived enemies under one roof, Mr. Hitchens said that he'd "made it a condition" of his meeting "that Edward Jay Epstein be invited to come." After the Blumenthal affidavit brouhaha broke out, Mr. Epstein accused Mr. Hitchens of denying the Holocaust to him in a private conversation years before. "He's a personal friend of the editor's," Mr. Hitchens said. Mr. Epstein isn't going to be there, though. "He's going to be in California," explained Mr. Navasky. Mr. Hitchens said he offered to reschedule for a better date, but that Mr. Epstein said "no date" was good for him.

Pity. He'll miss out on all that wonderful left-wing wailing and gnashing. Mr. Hitchens is looking forward to the confab, of course. "All the questions that they have may now, for what it's worth, be answered. And then I have to decide if I want to continue" to write for them, he said. "Which I don't really want to do."

Mr. Navasky said their disagreement was political, and that the editorial, which came out before the impeachment trial was over, expressed their view fully. He expressed "personal fondness" for Mr. Hitchens and is fully prepared, now that the ugly times are over, to end the ugly tactics, too. But that doesn't make Mr. Hitchens happy. "They crossed the line of decency or fairness for the most cowardly reasons," he said, contrasting their actions to Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's, who had dinner with him at Elaine's ("a public place," he said) after the news broke. As for The Nation , "There's no pride in being associated with them anymore," he said.

Ms. vanden Heuvel said that the editors had considered staging a more open forum, outside the magazine, where Mr. Hitchens could talk, but that that hadn't been scheduled yet. "There's never been a question" of his leaving, Ms. vanden Heuvel said. "He is a valued columnist and we have every intention of working together for the long term."

The Condé Nast corporate booklet "Countdown to a Move," detailing the company's upcoming relocation to its accident-prone new building at 4 Times Square, landed on the desks of anxious employees during the last week of February. It is designed to "introduce" Condé Nast workers to the new building, "as well as enhance your comfort level with the relocation process." That process is set to begin in June and proceed "in stages by magazine and corporate department over the course of two to three months." In addition to answering the question "Where are we moving?" the booklet reassures editors that they'll still be in the 212 area code, although the companywide prefix will change from 880 to 246.

In soothing tones reminiscent of the HAL computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey , other worries, including the status of the much ballyhooed titanium cafeteria, are addressed. "Will there be special handling for my locked files?" Answer: "Move Coordinators will relay all special instructions regarding the relocation of materials to the Move Consultants. All employees will be furnished with locked file cabinetry." "What is the food service going to be like? Will there be 'morning coffee'? What about in-house catering services?" Answer: "Because of the intricacies of Frank Gehry's design, our new cafeteria and private dining rooms will not be completed until early 2000. However, interim food service will be provided until the cafeteria is available. In addition, there will be morning coffee and tea, as well as snack and beverage vending machines, in the pantries located on each floor." "Will there be coat closets?" Answer: "Sufficient coat closets will exist on each floor, as well as individual closets in all enclosed offices."

The booklet does deliver the bad news that "for the first few months of occupancy, all employees will be required to enter the building through the main entrance on 42nd Street," while the publisher attempts to "secure a pickup/dropoff area designated on 43rd Street for limited car service." But not to worry: "All construction personnel and deliveries will be accommodated through a dedicated entrance separate from employee use." That way, Vogue editors can avoid getting their Manolo Blahniks covered in Sakrete.

Now that Tina Brown's toiling away for Miramax Films and the Hearst Corporation, trying to start her new magazine, Talk , on an actual budget–and her husband, Harold Evans, has traded his job running Random House to hold headline-writing classes for Daily News chairman Mortimer Zuckerman and his top lieutenants–it seems as if it's finally safe for them to be picked apart by a magazine journalist who wants to make it big. Enter Vanity Fair contributing editor Judy Bachrach. Simon & Schuster has signed her up to write a book on Ms. Brown and Mr. Evans, hoping to fill in the blanks since Mr. Evans' 1983 memoir, Good Times, Bad Times . It's Ms. Bachrach's first serious book (not counting a book she wrote many years ago about being a tall woman), and promises to be the first book-length appraisal of the Evans-Brown tag team. Working title: The Golden Couple .

"I've always wanted to do a book about the media, and in many ways it's the perfect media story," said Ms. Bachrach. She just started working on it in February and expects to deliver the manuscript in 18 months or so. She's not sure, however, if Mr. Evans and Ms. Brown will cooperate. "I'm almost positive they will," she said. "I talked to Harry about it and we'll see." Either way, "it's going to be done," she added. "I think he knows that." What was Mr. Evans' reaction to the idea? "Just, 'Why are people writing about us?'" she said.

Mr. Evans isn't known for being particularly easygoing on that front. In early 1998, he threatened the London Spectator with a libel suit over a piece journalist Toby Young had written on Mr. Evans' departure from Random House. This after Cindy Adams had already printed that Mr. Young had written a play satirizing the couple. In his legal action, Mr. Evans sought to enjoin Mr. Young from ever writing mean things about him again. His legal maneuver didn't work and Mr. Young said he is still looking for a producer. "They behaved like a couple of Scientologists," he said.

But Ms. Bachrach is pushing boldly ahead. She's taking a year's leave of absence from Allure and intends to cut down the number of pieces she's contracted to do at Vanity Fair , which gave her permission to do the book. Is she afraid her subjects might use their immense power within the New York media to stymie her? "Of course, people are not going to cooperate," she said. "This is inevitable. Harry and Tina know thousands of people. So what? So do I."

Neither Ms. Brown nor Mr. Evans returned calls for comment.

Sudden about-faces are nothing new for the New York Post . Sometimes it feels like the price one has to pay for the hard-charging, lurid and highly entertaining raison d'être of the tabloid. That happened again Feb. 24 and 25, when the Post first pandered to Amadou Diallo sensationalism with a story about a black man in Queens shot by a New York police officer and then, heeding its friend-to-the-cops traditions, skewered its own take on the story the next day.

Despite its knee-jerk tendencies, the paper had done a conscientious, occasionally lyrical job covering the death of Amadou Diallo thanks to police reporter Frankie Edozien. "It was a big step for the paper to send him to Africa," said columnist Jack Newfield. The front page of Feb. 24 seemed to be continuing along those lines, with a white-on-black headline blaring: "Cops Shoot Unarmed Man." A police shield was reproduced next to it. Inside, the headline read: "White cop shoots unarmed black suspect." The second paragraph termed the incident "starkly similar to the shooting of Amadou Diallo" and was paired on the page with a crusading column by Mr. Newfield about the political repercussions of the Diallo case and a reprint of Police Commissioner Howard Safir's statements to Dateline NBC that there was "no reason" to expect four officers to squeeze off 41 shots at an unarmed man.

The Daily News handled the story quietly that day, on page 26, with no Diallo references. By Feb. 25, both The New York Times and the News had Mr. Safir up top in their stories, explaining how the case was not at all like Diallo's. The Post had that quote in their follow-up, buttressed by a Steve Dunleavy column titled "Brutal? Nonsense! They Saved a Life." Reason: The unarmed man the police shot had been beating his wife. This time, the Post editorial page weighed in with a piece titled "What Cops Do for a Living," which began: "It's hard to imagine a more clear-cut example of the justifiable use of deadly force than the shooting of a distraught, perhaps suicidal, Queens man by police late Tuesday evening." Nowhere was there any mention of the paper's own coverage from the day before. In addition, there were two letters, quickly received and printed, under the headline: "Pitching Black Against White Makes for Yellow Journalism."

Neither editor Ken Chandler nor editorial page editor John Podhoretz returned calls for comment. Mr. Newfield noted that his columns are often rebutted on the editorial page but couldn't explain the paper's short-term memory loss. "I'm a columnist, not an editor," he said.